Missing: A Mason Gray Case

by William Markham

  “What time did you arrive at the apartment?” he asked.

  I checked my watch. It was straight-up midnight. Damn. How long had I been sitting here? I ran a quick timeline in my head. I’d left the office at eight, met the accountant downtown at eight thirty—that took about an hour—stopped by the store, and then grabbed a cab home. All of which put me home at about…

  “Ten… ish.”

  “Any idea why this guy was in your house?” he asked drolly.

  “Nope,” I said simply. “I’ll let you guys figure that one out.” It was just a little fib to keep this guy from interfering in my investigation. Calling Jack was one thing—I knew he’d feed me the info I needed and stay out of my way otherwise—but I didn’t know this guy from Adam. Given the reputation of the Chicago Police Department, I figured I’d be better safe than sorry.

  “Okay, Mr. Gray,” he said. “I don’t envy your situation, and I understand your concerns about your… safety.”

  Crap. I could hear a “but” coming, the inevitable lecture about not interfering with police business. It was now, officially, his investigation. Yadda, yadda, yadda. And then—

  “I’m here to help. I’m sure you’re aware that we have procedures that must be followed. Certain questions must be asked and answered to clear you as a suspect. I want to make sure that’s done as efficiently as possible so that you can proceed with your own affairs. I know you want to solve this puzzle as much as anyone. I only ask that you share whatever you discover with me posthaste. Are we clear?”

  I blinked a couple of times as his words sank in. He’d skipped the lecture and the warnings. He must have known they wouldn’t have done any good. Rowe was smarter than he looked: rather than playing the bristling, territorial copper, he was going the route of the sympathetic colleague. Maybe he was sincere, but I didn’t buy it.

  “Absolutely,” I said, and I felt the distance between us widen.

  “Good. There’s just a few more things we need to take care of: fingerprints and so on. I’ll introduce you to the Crime Scene guys. Shall we?”

  I nodded. I put a couple of ones on the table to take care of the coffee, then we both stood and walked out into the rain and across the street. Lorraine stood behind the counter, scowling suspiciously at Rowe. Guess she didn’t like him any more than I did.

  When we arrived in my apartment, three technicians were well into processing the scene for evidence, taking pictures from every angle and dusting my desk for fingerprints. Nothing appeared to have been moved or bagged for evidence yet.

  “Once all the pictures have been taken,” said the detective, “perhaps you could look through your belongings to tell us if anything is missing.”

  I was hoping he’d say something like that.

  After several minutes, they let me pick through the mess surrounding my desk. Its contents had been rifled through and left lying willy-nilly, but everything appeared to be present and accounted for. Damn, no help there. I gave the detective a shrug.

  “All right, Mr. Gray, we’ve got your number. If we need anything else from you, we’ll call. Unfortunately, we can’t allow you to remain here. Is there someplace you can stay?”

  I thought about it for a few seconds, came up with nothing, and said, “Yeah.”

  I left the apartment and walked out to the street corner.

  2

  It was still raining outside, so I stood on the sidewalk under the front awning and waited for it to let up. I wasn’t sure what to do next. There was a hotel nearby where I could hole up for the night, and I was pretty tired, but I kept worrying about Frank. Until I heard from Larsen, I wasn’t likely to get any sleep. Someone had obviously been looking for something in my apartment, and just as obviously hadn’t found it—or had been whacked before they did.

  The one solid fact I had was the identity of the dead man, Victor Sanz. Though Larsen was running the name for me, I decided to see what info I could dig up on my own about the guy. The cops might have access to more privileged databases than I did, but they were always short on time and manpower. I might be able to turn something up faster.

  Seeing as the weather wasn’t about to give me a break, I flipped up the collar on my coat and flagged down the first cab I saw.

  Our office is in Old Town—an area right smack between Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast, the two wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. It’s also a stone’s throw away from Cabrini, one of the poorest. A lot of rich people live in this area: doctors, lawyers, and such. Most of them are north of 40: people with secrets, people with money. It’s the perfect spot for a business like ours.

  The cabbie dropped me off in front of the brownstone building. I walked the perimeter, checking the second floor for lights. None were on. I made my way up the back stairs and unlocked the door, listening carefully; I wasn’t in the mood for any more surprises. The office door was locked and appeared un-tampered-with. Inside, everything was quiet. Satisfied that no assassins were lurking in the shadows, I sat down at my desk and booted up the computer.

  Computers are wonderful things, especially when connected to the Internet. I did most of my work in front of one. Most people think my profession is a thing of the past because any moron can log on and search for whatever they want. This is true, but it takes a lot of time to sift through that much information and find what you’re looking for. And time is money. The trick is knowing how and where to look for that needle in the haystack. Plus, a lot of sites require membership fees, which discourages your average Joe. That being said, the Internet is only a starting point. It can help focus your efforts in the field, but real detective work inevitably takes you out of the office and into the brick-and-mortar world.

  I started by Googling “Victor Sanz Chicago.” 315,000 entries popped up. Great. I hit the images link, which narrowed it down to 200,000, and scrolled down the page. I figured a face would be easier to recognize. Seeing nothing familiar, I narrowed my search even further. A couple of newspaper articles mentioned the name Victor Sanz in connection with alleged thefts, but nothing really stood out. I checked the Cook County Circuit Court site for cases involving a Victor Sanz and came up with the same petty theft records but no convictions.

  All the while, I wondered why this guy looked familiar if I didn’t know the name. I must have seen him somewhere. But where? On a whim, I checked our in-house database of all the cases we’ve worked. Maybe I’d met him on an investigation and snapped a few photos of the guy.

  I was so intent on my search that I just about crapped myself when the phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out hastily, checked the incoming caller id, and swiped my finger across the screen.

  “Gray,” I said.

  “Gray, it’s Larsen. Frank’s fine—a little irritated at being woken up at one in the morning, but unharmed. The patrolman filled him in on what happened, and he seemed rather baffled. I can’t spare a car to post watch, but knowing Frank, he’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and hung up.

  I felt better knowing Frank was okay, but now that I was involved in looking for something, I couldn’t get any shut-eye until I’d finished the search. Unfortunately, our in-house records turned up nil. At some point, my eyelids got awfully heavy, so I stretched out on the couch in my office to rest them for just a minute.

  ***

  The next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming through the window. I guess it had finally quit raining. But that’s not what woke me. I must have heard the front door close in my sleep and decided there might be a threat. Now I heard someone shuffling around outside my office area. I lay very still, slowly reaching for the small semi-automatic pistol at my side. Through my open door, I saw movement across the hall… and then heard whistling to the tune of “Go Tell Aunt Roadie”—well, it was supposed to be. I’m not sure what key it was in, but I did know it was the wrong one.

  I immediately relaxed. A morning whistle was one of Frank’s annoying little habits. Yesterday’s tune had been “What
a Friend We Have in Jesus.” No telling what he’d come in with tomorrow.

  I sat up on the couch and dug something crunchy out of the corner of my left eye. I checked my watch. Eight a.m. I must have groaned, because Frank stuck his head in my door and said, “Oh, morning Gray. Heard you had a rough night. Let me make a pot of coffee, and we’ll talk.”

  I walked over to the bathroom in the hallway, took a leak, and splashed some water on my face. My neck was stiff from sleeping on the couch, and my eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. Brad Pitt’s got nothing on me in the looks department, I thought.

  The coffee brewing down the hall in the kitchenette reached my sniffer, and I felt the drool forming in my mouth. I followed my nose, grabbed a mug off the counter and poured myself a cupful. As I stood there letting the caffeine do its job, Frank wandered around the corner.

  “So,” he began, “long night?”

  A lot of people complain about stupid questions like that. They seem to think that if the answer is obvious, the question needn’t be asked. I’m not one of those people, especially in the morning. In fact, I prefer being asked asinine questions that need no real explanation. It requires less thought on my part.

  I grunted an affirmative.

  “I can only imagine. Listen, I was thinking that you might want a little downtime in the next couple of days. My load is pretty light at the moment, so I can field any new cases and take the ones from yesterday off your hands if you haven’t started on them yet.”

  “That’d be great, Frank. I did interview that accountant last night, but you can have all the others.”

  “Okay, I’ll switch them in the system and you can hand over the files whenever.”

  “Great,” I said. And it was great. I had a feeling that running down this Victor Sanz guy was going to require most of my attention for the next week or so.

  Frank went into his office, and I went back to mine. He had assigned me four cases yesterday—the accountant one, a missing person, a premarital screening, and an identity theft—all fairly standard. I pulled the files out of my briefcase, replaced the accountant one, and then made a pile of the others. I checked my watch. It was 9 o’clock on the nose. I took another swallow of coffee, picked up the stack of folders and took them over to Frank.

  Dropping the folders on his desk, I said, “I’ve got a couple of things to look at while I’m here, then I’ll take the camera out for a while.” I’d made some notes on the accountant’s wife’s daily schedule; her husband seemed to believe the hanky-panky was happening around lunch time. I figured I’d stake out their neighborhood and see if I could snap a few photos of the adulterous duo. It would also give me time to think of what to do about Victor Sanz.

  I went back to my computer and resumed my search. After fifteen fruitless minutes, I was thinking about shutting everything down and heading out when the desk phone intercom thingy rang.

  I punched a button. “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure I gave you this missing person file yesterday?” asked Frank.

  “Pretty sure. Why?”

  “I can’t find it in the computer. You sure it isn’t an old case that got mixed in?”

  “I don’t think so. You want me to see if I can find it on my end?”

  “Maybe I just forgot to enter the dad-blamed thing.” He was getting a bit forgetful these days, but I remembered seeing it in the system the day before.

  “I don’t think so. I’ll take a look over here. Maybe you’ve got a glitch.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and hung up.

  I opened the database and browsed through the files with yesterday’s date on them, but I didn’t see the name I was looking for. That was strange. I deleted the date and just ran the name, Ellie McCarthy. Again, the computer came up with squat.

  I walked over to Frank’s office.

  “Weird, I can’t find it either, but I’m positive I saw it yesterday. Let me have a look at the file.”

  Frank handed it to me. I opened the manila folder and looked over the paperwork. A twenty-one-year-old girl, missing for three weeks, father filed the report, and the cops hadn’t turned anything up. It was a typical missing person case, but something tickled the back of my brain.

  “I’m gonna hang onto this, Frank. Something’s not sitting well. I’m going to head out. If you figure out what’s going on with the computer, let me know.”

  Frank grunted, and I stuffed the McCarthy file into my briefcase, grabbed the camera and made for Lincoln Park.

  ***

  I’ve had people ask me how I can do a stakeout without a car. Most people think of stakeouts as something that happens late at night, sitting in a black unmarked cruiser while detectives eat crullers and drink scorched corner-store coffee. But what do you expect if they get all their info about law enforcement from reruns of Cops and Lawyers or whatever?

  The whole point of a stakeout is to watch the target without them knowing that they’re being watched. I don’t know about you, but if I walked by a car with two people sitting in it with a camera, I’d think something screwy was going on. So I do most of my watching from coffee shops, diners, or cafes. Think about it: when was the last time you paid attention to someone sitting at the Starbucks across the street, even if they did have a camera? Lots of folks carry cameras, and most of them are more interested in taking a black and white photo of the plastic bag that’s blown against the fire hydrant because somebody might think it’s “artistic” than they are in taking pictures of you. But I digress.

  By two o’clock I had plenty of photos of Mrs. Accountant and her new beau, so I figured I’d head downtown and drop off the SD card with Mr. Accountant. I took the El train to the loop, pondering the craziness of the previous night.

  The feeling that I’d seen Victor Sanz before wouldn’t let go. Why he’d been in my apartment to begin with was, likewise, still a mystery. Add to that the weirdness of the missing file from our database, and my head started to hurt.

  The light coming through the windows dimmed as the train went underground. I stared out at the concrete tunnel walls as we sped by, occasionally passing a small access door. I had often wondered what was behind those doors. Was it just a maintenance closet, or was there a network of tunnels webbing their way through the underbelly of Chicago? Did mutant mole people spend the entirety of their blind lives foraging there in the perpetual darkness? I think I read a book about something like that once. Mole people... what an imagination.

  Just then, a thought bubbled up through the mire of my brain. I could tell it was something important. I waited for the bubble to reach the surface so I could see it more clearly, and then…

  “This is Lake. Doors open on the left at Lake,” said the melodious and ambiguously ethnic female voice over the intercom. Crap, this was my stop. I jostled my way out the doors and felt the thought bubble burst. I had no idea what was inside it.

  3

  After delivering the photos, I paid a visit to the father of our missing girl, Ellie McCarthy, who was also now missing from our database. I dialed the number in the file on the way to the train station. It rang a few times, then a grizzled voice picked up. I told him who I was and that I wanted to come by to talk. He said he'd be there and hung up.

  McCarthy lived in Canaryville on the Southside near the old stockyards, the neighborhood made famous by Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” It’s not a place I go very often; I generally stick to the north side of the city, because that’s where my business is. Don’t get me wrong, there are some affluent areas on the south side, but not nearly as many as north of the loop. Also, I kind of stick out down there.

  Few people are “from” Chicago itself: we’re mostly transplants from other places. Generally when someone tells you they’re from Chicago, they mean one of the surrounding suburbs. Neighborhoods like Canary Park and Bridgeport, however, are some of the few places people are actually “from.” With a long history in the city, they maintain a strong sense of community, and outsiders simply don’t fit
in—and if your grandparents didn’t grow up there, you’re an outsider.

  McCarthy’s house was a small bungalow typical of the neighborhood. As his name would suggest, he was thoroughly Irish, like most of the folks there.

  The Irish in urban areas of America have gotten a raw deal over the last couple centuries, stereotyped by Hollywood as bigoted and hot-tempered. What many people don't realize, or choose to ignore, is that like many ethnic minorities, they were oppressed and taken advantage of in the early years of our nation's history. They weren't slaves, by any means, but they did endure horrid conditions.

  McCarthy didn't exude any of the stereotypical anger, resentment, or animosity usually attributed to such people. Instead, he was blanketed by an aura of deep sadness. He was most likely in his late fifties, but he looked older: his full head of hair was snowy white, and there were deep creases around his mouth and eyes. The last couple of weeks obviously weighed heavily on him.

  After letting me in, he walked to a small corner table in the living room, poured two fingers of Glenlivet into a tumbler, and handed it to me. Though not my typical drink, I graciously accepted. Then he poured a second glass for himself.

  We settled on the couch, then I spoke up. “I've got a copy of the police report you filed last week, but I was hoping to get a more personal sense for your daughter. What can you tell me about her? What are her hobbies? Where does she spend her free time?”

  He sat quietly for a moment, then said, “I'm not sure what I can tell you. We've grown apart the last several years. I don't know much about her personal life anymore. We used to be buddies. We'd go bowling, go to the movies. After her mother died, I'd take her down to the pub with me, and she'd tell me all about her dreams while I had a pint. She always wanted to be an architect, and she'd draw me sketches of what the city skyline would look like when she got through with it. But when she went to college, I started seeing less and less of her until she finally got a place of her own closer to downtown.